During a National Transportation Safety Board hearing on the January 29 midair collision over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., a Federal Aviation Administration official confirmed that an air traffic controller failed to warn the airplane’s crew about the approaching Army helicopter. It marked the first time the FAA publicly acknowledged that an error may have occurred in the control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on that fateful night.
[In the lead-up to Thursday’s hearing, investigators had largely focused on staffing shortages at the air traffic control tower and indications that the Black Hawk may have been flying at an unusually high altitude as the most likely causes of the crash.]
The crash resulted in 67 fatalities and is now under federal investigation.
The Washington Post reported:
The hearing featured testimony about a high number of takeoffs and landings at the airport, combined with heavy helicopter traffic, that led to air traffic controllers “pushing the line” on safety, in the words of a tower manager….The controller who was responsible for guiding the flights of the helicopter and the airliner had juggled contact with 21 different aircraft in the 10 minutes before the helicopter and jet collided over the Potomac River, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.The controller had told NTSB investigators that he felt “overwhelmed” about 15 minutes before the crash, but that traffic eased and he had felt the workload was more manageable, according to an interview transcript. The controller was working two tower positions at once — managing helicopters and local airliner traffic.
The American Airlines flight, operated by regional carrier PSA Airlines, was arriving from Wichita, Kansas.
Homendy questioned FAA officials on Thursday about the sequence of communications between the control tower and the jet. She asked Nick Fuller, the acting No. 2-ranking official in the FAA’s air traffic control branch, “Should the local controller have let the PSA crew know there was a helicopter there?”
According to the Post, he replied yes, adding that “the controller should have told the airliner’s crew that the helicopter was using visual separation and that ‘the targets were likely to merge.’”
Just as it had been reported in the days following the crash, discussion at the hearing centered on staffing woes at Reagan National.
At the time, I wrote:
In the days following the crash, an internal preliminary report from the FAA and reviewed by the New York Times suggested that staffing levels at the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on the night of the crash were “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.”Specifically, the FAA determined that a single air traffic controller was performing the duties of two people at the time of the incident, communicating with both the helicopter and the plane.According to the New York Times, during the busiest hours of the day, from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., “those jobs are typically assigned to two people, not one.” However, after 9:30 p.m., “those duties may be combined.” The collision occurred at 8:48 p.m.On that fateful night, one air traffic controller reportedly left work early, as per the report. That may have resulted in a single controller managing both aircraft.
The Post reported:
Controllers told investigators that they didn’t feel outside pressure to keep up with the pace, but FAA managers described how American Airlines — the biggest operator at the airport — designed a compressed schedule that effectively increased traffic. The approach was based on the carrier’s financial incentives, one of the managers said. An American manager testified Thursday that the airline had tried to make changes after visiting the tower.In the minutes before the crash, the controller was seeking pilots willing to land on Runway 33 to relieve pressure on the main runway. One crew declined. The pilots of American Eagle Flight 5342 from Wichita hesitated for a few seconds before agreeing, according to a transcript released this week. That decision set them on a circling route that would bring them directly into the path of the oncoming Black Hawk, which was using a helicopter route that passed right under the landing path.
The Post interviewed a number several aviation experts and former NTSB investigators and while they all added to the discussion, the bottom line is that the airport is both too busy and its air traffic controllers are juggling too much at once.
The picture that emerged from documents and a second day of NTSB hearings was of an airport that was being pushed to its limit on a daily basis, with controllers stretched thin and trying to safely separate a demanding mix of airline and helicopter traffic.The airport frequently saw 79 departures and arrivals an hour, according to an FAA email released by the NTSB this week. With more than one plane a minute landing or taking off, controllers had to search for ways to keep traffic moving.
Since the crash, the FAA has set the current maximum arrival rate at 30 an hour.
The article is behind a paywall, but it can be viewed here.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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